Ion Dissonance – Cursed

By Matt Lewis

Ion Dissonance, a band among bands hailing from the great metal hotbed of Quebec. Their fourth album Cursed comes without much fanfare or anticipation, their previous album Minus The Herd was a nuclear bomb made of shit. I recently saw them live and was blown away… by the new songs off of Cursed. I knew I had to hear the whole album in its entirety.

“And I will strike down
upon those with great vengeance and with furious
anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my
brothers. And you will know that my name is the
Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.”

This famous quote is Jules from Pulp Fiction played by Sam Jackson and I think it represents what this album sounds like. If God was real, angry and vengeful, this album would be his sound track. 8 string guitars, pounding bass and double bass drums are all here and come together to bring a furious sound that hits you in stomach and the balls or vagina. Manic, yet cohesive. When you think of 8 string guitars you think Meshuggah and while there is a little in common with the overall sound of the guitar tone, the structures have little in common. There’s not a lot of off time riffs, there’s much more underlying scales and vocally there’s no comparison to Jens from meshuggah. The vocals from Kevin McCaughey is pretty straight forward as far as deathcore and metalcore goes but he did a great job. At times it sounds like Kevin is “exercisin’ the demons”. The music really gives you an intense ferocious feeling and that is helped by the vocal styling. Ion is back from metal purgatory and came up with an album the angel of death would have on his gold ipod.

9 / 10

(Century Media)

